News

MSc. student Graham Howell was making headlines in the Dundalk Herald this week with his research on the invasive grass Phragmites australis. He will be presenting to stakeholders at a workshop hosted by the Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority and the Township of Southgate. The workshop will take place 16th March at 9 am at 392137 Grey Road 109, Holstein, Ontario at the Optimist Community Centre.  For more information, contact Jo-Anne Harbinson 519-367-3040 ext. 235 or by e-mail at j.harbinson@svca.on.ca.

Rooney Lab MSc. student Sarah Yuckin has her research featured by the University of Waterloo as part of our annual World Wetlands Day celebration.  Read more here.

The Rooney Lab is currently seeking a PhD student with experience in community analysis, multivariate statistics, and R software who is interested in wetland ecology, restoration ecology, and the interactions among communities.  The successful applicant will commence a fully funded PhD program working with a comprehensive dataset from temporary marshes in Alberta, Canada.  The dataset includes vegetation, bird, and macro-invertebrate data, water chemistry, sediment chemistry, and hydrology environmental covariate data from nearly 100 wetlands spanning two Natural Regions.

Rooney Lab MSc. Student, Courtney Robichaud, co-authored a blog post for the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative on her thesis work.  She repeated a study from a decade ago and found markedly greater changes to the bird community in response to Phragmites invasion that was reported previously.  Read more about it here.

February 12, to celebrate Darwin Day, the Biology Department at the University of Waterloo hosted a bonspiel. The Rooney Lab was represented by both veterans and novices to the sport, but all brought their enthusiasm for evolution by natural selection to the ice!

Congratulations Rooney Lab member Adam Kraft, who won the naming competition for GRADventure, the University of Waterloo's hub for professional development resources. GRADventure launched Jan 27th. For access to all manner of workshops, resources, and special event listings targeting graduate students preparing for the workplace, check it out here.

Released today, Dr. Rooney and colleagues Dr. Robinson and Dr. Petrone from the University of Waterloo have a comment piece in Nature Climate Change detailing their framework for integrating reclamation planning for megaprojects at the landscape scale with future climate change projections. Reconciling reclamation plans with climate change is necessary to give us our best hope at achieving self-sustaining reclamation targets.

Read more here

Canada Research Chair in Physical Hydrology and professor at the University of Calgary Dr. Masaki Hayashi will be visiting the Rooney Lab on October 27th and will be presenting as part of the Department of Biology 2015 Seminar Series his talk titled Eco-hydrology of prairie wetlands and management implications: synthesis of a 50 year study.

Congratulations to Dr. Rooney who will join the board of IAGLR (International Association for Great Lakes Research).  Dr. Rooney is honoured to serve the IAGLR membership and hopes to see you all in Guelph next June. 

Congratulations today to Dr. Rooney, who received a University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award.  The award was created by the university to reward faculty members for outstanding contributions to scholarship and teaching.